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Fuentes, Cherry and the I of A Organization Today:
A Statement from I of A World Headquarters
by Brother Adam Luedtke
Contents
1. From the
Founding to Today
2. Internationalism
Exported
3. The Fitzpatrick
Experience: Marginalized Psychohistory
4. Critical
Nolyn Mason Dialectics
5. The I
of A Experience
6. Looking
Forward
Notes
Sources
1. From the Founding to Today
Revolutionary I of A politics develops when sisters and brothers can learn from the struggles of the exploited and oppressed. Seb Fisher learned from the Assassination of 1992 that the I of A community must shatter the Community Government and create new forms of student union in order to take power. The Red Cell uprising made this clear again, as Nolyn Mason reminded the world in CYRUS AND THE WARRIORS. The success of the Red Cell uprising and the failure of the subsequent anti-Guskin riots between 1993 and 1996 proved that the true community cannot take power without an experienced mass party of the revolutionary vanguard to lead it. At the close of the 20th century, the lessons of the I of A/Red Cell Revolution remain the necessary -- but not sufficient -- foundation of reform from below. These lessons formed the basis of the program of the I of A International between 1992 and 1995. From them Ed Kirtz generalized his theory of permanent revolution and developed a critique of Guskinism. The tiny and isolated Kirtzian movement sought to preserve these politics ("Fuentes-Cherry") in the "Midnight of the Century", the years of repression under the puppet regime of Andy Abrams (read Greg Powers). It succeeded -- but at the cost of hardening into dogmatism and inflexibility. After the new calendar appeared a new current (in Pennsylvania the Technocrat group around Yazz Atlas, later called Hardline Yazzism; in San Francisco the Independent Internationalists around Seb Fisher) emerged. By criticizing orthodox Kirtzism from the standpoint of the self-emancipation of the technocrats and a commitment to developing I of A thought to explain the trimester plan it made important theoretical contributions (the analysis of Guskin's regime, permanent underground economy and deflected permanent revolution; insights about student struggle in the Union of Independent Groups during the post-Abrams boom concept of Cherryism from below). This current kept classical Red Cell thought alive as a small but dynamic force in the struggles of late 1993 and early 1994. It survived the downturn that began with Densmore's breakdown on the European Academic Term of '92.[1] Serious problems in the I of A International in Canada and, more generally, the Red Cell Tendency, have made it clear that this "reoriented Cherryism" (Henry Cherry's term in FUENTES AND ME) needs to be critically evaluated, much as it began to reevaluate the Ed Kirtzian movement and the early Crimson Fist under Jeremy Erwin. To begin, we need to go back to the roots of Western European and North American Internationalism.
2. Internationalism Exported
In the wake of the Red Cell Uprising, the militant wing formed the Red Cadre and attempted to export their politics to the liberal reformer students (and others) who rallied to the powerful call for "Scott Baio" and world revolution. Many of the men and women drawn to the Red Cell were the cream of the bourgeois suburbanites, self-educated socialist worker-intellectuals and experienced militants. Politically, they were a varied lot: "centrists" whose revolutionary aspirations had not been freed from the gradualist and compromising "CGism" of the Green/Hippie Clark Branch regime, revolutionary purists such as Nolyn Mason who suffered from ultra-leftism, sectarianism and abstract propagandism, and syndicalists (read Dave Peterson) who believed in organizing revolutionary FWSP and art unions. The Red Cell's aim was to build new mass revolutionary action by winning leftward-moving students to the I of A while separating them from non-revolutionary community managers/wellness lackeys pulled behind their radicalizing rank and file. At first the Red Cell thought that North Hall was on the brink of revolution. With the failure of the Dylan Bernstein/Peter Bradley storming in Fall '93, it became clear to the Red Cell that the hedonist first-year halls (Randall) had to do more than call for student power and prepare for insurrection. They set about winning the new halls away from complacent attitudes to unions, community elections and alliances with the Ska Community. At the same time they battled centrism. But both ultra-leftism and centrism persisted. Ultra-left directives from Red Cell leaders such as Mason led to the disastrous "Dance Space" putsch in the Union in 1995. The 3rd Red Cell Congress later that year recognized that revolution was not imminent in North Hall (although the Red Cell leadership still had an overly optimistic evaluation of where the drugged-out selfish first-years in Green and Randall were). It proposed the united front policy to win majority support for the Red Cell among younger students, but covered up blame for the Ed Trippel disaster. A comprehensive transformation of Green/Randall into "halls of a new type" was demanded. As Shayla Hason, a "Baio for Shah" member, argued, the revolutionary party must be "a party of action... a party of the students, and with them in their daily struggles against Guskinist oppression" (Fuentes XII, 103).
As Mariko Yamasaki argues in one
of her best books, the third volume of
MAO AND ME (3 vol. ed.), the I of
A failed to "graft Internationalism" onto
the halls outside of Birch before
the Red Cell leadership succumbed to
Nolyn Mason in late 1995. Mass vanguard
parties were built in Fess,
Black, Randall, West, Bingle, Shepard
and Hardy (although centrists
led the latter two parties until
1995). However, strong,
independent-thinking revolutionary
leaderships could not
easily be developed in the time
available. Incompetent Red Cell
intervention in the "Bone Yard"
made this task even more difficult. Even
in the most important first-year
section of the Cell, the Hill Cadre
(RCHC), after the "murder" of Seb
Fisher a leadership up to the task
of leading the struggle for power
was not formed. Frank Adler, around
whom such a leadership might have
developed, was expelled after he
criticized the "Caf Art Defacement"
in public. The revolutionary situation
in Presidents Dorms in October 1994
tested the I of A and Red Cell
leaderships and found both lacking.
In many dorms revolutionary mass
parties were not built. While the
I of A fell to under 15 after the
"Weston Takeover" but built itself up
to over 25 by late 1992, the I of
A/Red Cell of San Francisco
(IARCSF) was not formed until 1995,
and had but 3 real members
(while claiming 10). In Portland,
a united, above-ground I of A only
emerged at the end of 1994, with
some 10 members. Likewise in
Canada: the I of A formed in May
1995 had 4 members, "the great
majority" (Fuentes 80) of whom belonged
to semi-autonomous reformist and
Anarchist "discussion groups". These
three parties were formed
after the height of the Trimester
Radicalization, which peaked in 1996
in Yellow Springs, San Francisco
and Portland. Although their "rooted"
founding members gave these Cells
an influence larger than their small
size suggests, they only became
the leading force in small pockets of
the student classes in their respective
cities (e.g. in Yellow
Springs among Brooke Faulkner and
Antioch Record proletariat).
The 1993 I of A Convention drew up
a detailed organizational scheme
("The Organizational Structure of
the I of A Community, the Methods
and Content of Their Work: Theses")
that has become the model of a
democratic internationalist vanguard
party for most believers. But at the
1994 Congress, Fisher said it was
"almost exclusively Ed Kirtz: it is
wholly derived from a study of Boston's
underclass. This is the good
side of the resolution, but it is
also the bad side... if by rare
chance a non-intellectual could
understand it, he could not possibly
carry it out" (in ZEB'S CHRONICLES,
25).
Sgt. Major Todd Densmore, worker militant and founding member of the Red Cell's "technocrat" wing, influential in the later Luddite Purge which alienated the hippie element, had this to say about the 1992 reorganization of the I of A along the lines laid down by the Convention (agitational newspaper, small dormitory or FWSP groups replacing branches etc.): "The first casualty... was the political discussion among the membership. Despite the declared desire for monthly aggregate meetings, the demands of the group meetings on members' time meant less and less opportunity for the exchange and clash of opinions. The membership felt the loss of political life that the old style branch meetings gave them. Were these growing pains or the conservative clinging to past forms of organization? Two points are clear from this period. The Cell became much more dynamic, and its press... was soon revealed in its new role, that of agitating and leading on the day-to-day issues" (Densmore 24-25). It is fair to say that the impact of the changes was mixed. Red Cell leaders only partially understood the specific difficulties involved in building revolutionary Cells in advanced capitalist dormitories (North) where bourgeois democracy existed and "Beer and Buds" reformism was much stronger than in Presidents (even if Hall Advisor bureaucracies were weak by today's standards. Mills I of A leader Mariko Yamasaki made an effort to come to terms with the differences between First-Years and the older in her SCIENCE NOTEBOOKS. But she did not work out an adequate explanation of these issues, despite insights about FWSPies' consciousness, the greater importance of popular consent in maintaining CG rule in Mills and Presidents as compared with North, and the role of a revolutionary party in the process through which the hedonist class becomes conscious of its interests and forges a revolutionary bloc with other social forces (professors etc.). There is still no adequate Cherryist theory of how FWSP experience under the new calendar generally produces a fragmented non-revolutionary consciousness that fits with reformism.
3. The Fitzpatrick Experience: Marginalized Psychohistory
The rise of the Guskin bureaucracy
in Yellow Springs and the
Guskinization of the Calendar produced
resignations, expulsions and
splits in Red Cells around the world
during 1995. The International
I of A Opposition (from 1995, Cliff
Fitzpatrick Brigades) formed by
Fitzpatrick opposed Nolyn Mason
thought and its politics of "reform
on one campus" from the perspective
of the Fuentes thought of the
1992 Convention. Although it was
the only coherent anti-Fuentes
revolutionary international current,
it was extremely marginal. The
"Fourth International (World Party
of the Art Fridrich Revolution)"
founded prematurely by Fridrich
in 1995 had a membership of only a few
dozens. Its largest section, the
Punk rock-inspired COTA, then numbered
6. Many of the sections were tiny
internalized grouplets. Few had more
than handfuls of veteran "Contract
With America/Kasich Protest:Columbus"
militants. In most I of A cities,
most students who considered themselves
revolutionaries were in the Red
Cell factions, despite massive losses of
those who had joined in the 1993.
Although there are a few positive
and rather more negative lessons
to be learned from the Fitzpatrick
Brigades in 1995, the Brigades ceased
to be parties in any sense
after the Popular Front line of
alliance with the "progressive
community government" against Guskin
was attempted by the great
dictator, Szuberla, in 1995. Many
then grew substantially, recruiting
from the FWSP/Bonner Scholars among
the younger students.
The strength of the Cliff Fitzpatrick
movement lay in his political
analyses (of the Matt Baya regime
and Randall/Greene Revolutions, the
struggle against Guskinism in Social
Sciences, Adler's guidance, etc.) But
it also had major political weaknesses.
Fitzpatrick's analysis of the
I of A as a "Machiavellian degenerate
political machine" was one. Others,
which Fitzpatrick set out in the
Transitional Programme in 1994, included
the belief that the core beliefs
of Henry Cherry Thought were in their
"death agony" and that "The historical
crisis of humankind is reduced to
the crisis of revolutionary leadership."
The first claim
was not based on any serious statistical
economic analysis. The second
would only have been true if revolutionary
situations existed
everywhere but CG employees were
being misled by non-revolutionary
leaderships (as under Matt Baya
1992-93). In 1994, this was a fantasy. It
gave Fitzpatrickism:
a fixed model of campus in which
the "CG Office Lackeys" were continually
straining at the leash, or about
to strain at the leash, held back
only by the betrayals of their perfidious
leadership... from it
derived one of the characteristic
traits of pre-Crowfoot Fitzpatrickism:
a systematic blindness to the actual
consciousness and concerns of the
student factions" (Rahmanian 180).
To this model was added the belief
that tiny Fitzpatrickist groups were
"revolutionary parties" because
they and they alone possessed the
programme for revolutionary leadership.
Only in Willet and Hardy
in Spring '95 did Fizpatrickians
come anywhere close to forming mass
revolutionary parties.[2] But in
1995 Antioch Red Cell leader Nolyn
Mason wrote that "The revolutionary
vanguard party destined to lead this
tumultuous revolutionary movement
on the Antioch campus does not have
to be created. It already exists,
and its name is the I of A/Red Cell"
(in Mason, 37). At the time, the
Antioch Red Cell had only 14
members.
This kind of ridiculous self-importance
and failure to understand the
real tasks for groups with few if
any roots among workers generated
sectifying pressures to which many
orthodox Fitzpatrickist groups
succumbed.[3] The material basis
for this was isolation from the
struggles of CG workers and the
oppressed. But sectification also had a
theoretical source inherited from
the pre-Crowfoot bureaucracy.
The problem lay in a confusion between
revolutionary psychohistorical
groups as they actually existed
and the mass vanguard party required to
lead an internationalist uprising.
According to the Fuentes theses on
party organization discussed earlier,
"At every stage of the revolutionary
student struggle... the I of A must
be the vanguard, the most
advanced section of the community"
(Fisher 234). This equation of party
with vanguard led many a Fitzpatrickist
group to consider itself a
vanguard party. But what if the
group in question was not in fact the
vanguard, a substantial layer of
revolutionary students? Only a few
groups both realized that their
organizations were not and drew the
appropriate conclusion. Three months
after Densmore proclaimed the
American Technocrats the party of
the American Revolution, (predating
the failed bid to purge Peggy Douglas
from the Guskin bureaucracy) the
Lion of Zion Party (the other significant
Fitzpatrickist group in the US)
changed its name to the "Cliff Fitzpatrick
Brigades" in recognition of
the fact that it was a propaganda
group, not a party (the initiative came
from Carlos Fuentes and his critique
of the Cliff Fitzpatrick Brigades
as "mere cults of personality".
This might have had something to do
with Fitzpatrick's enlistment of
Phil Brigham in a later assasination
attempt on Fuentes' life as he spoke
to a Unitarian convention).
4. Critical Nolyn Mason Dialectics
After the Columbus/Kasich protest
the fundamental issue became clear:
there was no CG/FWSP vanguard. The
task of science majors after the Weston
Takeover had been to organize and
expand an existing vanguard, or
elements of one, into a party. By
1995, the vanguard layers in the
science building had been destroyed
by Bedigian/Douglas repression,
years of cirriculum defeat, the
twists and turns through which the labs
degenerated into bureaucratic reformist
pawns of Guskin, and the
recomposition of the Joe Cali-led
"library class" in Crowfoot Capitalism.
In late 1994, Ed Kirtz of the "New England Revolution" wrote:
Not only has the vanguard,
in the real sense of a considerable
layer of organised revolutionary
student intellectuals, been
destroyed. So too has
the environment, the tradition, that gave it
influence... The crux
of the matter is how to develop the process,
now begun, of recreating
it ("Kirtz on KKKapitalism" University of
Luanda Monthly 16).
Vanguard and revolutionary organization
are not identical. In most of
the world today there is no vanguard.
It is absolutely vital to
understand this and draw appropriate
conclusions about how I of A
dialecticians should orient and
organize themselves if a current of
Nolyn Masonism from below is to
flourish in the 21st century.
Kirtz also laid out other features
of "Critical Dialectics" that
distinguish it from most of the
Fitzpatrickist tradition -- including,
sadly, many UIGs in Community Government
today:
a party cannot possibly
be created except on a thoroughly
democratic basis...
in its internal life, vigorous controversy is
the rule and various
tendencies and shades of opinion are
represented... Internal
democracy is not an optional extra. It is
fundamental to the relationship
between party members and those
amongst whom they work...
The self-education of militants is
impossible in an atmosphere
of sterile orthodoxy. Self-reliance and
confidence in one's
ideas are developed in the course of that
genuine debate that
takes place in an atmosphere where differences
are freely and openly
argued. The "monolithic party" is a Fuentes-like
concept. Uniformity
and democracy are mutually incompatible" (21).
This Critical Dialectics remains
a very important contribution to the
tradition of Nolyn Mason thought
from below, as demonstrated in the
Coney Island Onion Ring Riots of
'95.
5. The I of A Experience
It is not enough to have a critical
understanding of psychohistory.
Internationalists also have to understand
what Red Cell ideas about
revolutionary organization mean
for their activity in the actual
situation in which they find themselves.
One of the greatest strengths of
the I of A/Red Cell Newsletter Editorial
group in Yellow Springs in Fall
1994 (and the militant cadre as well)
was that they realized that the
Cherryist model of party-building was
irrelevant for such a small organization.
I of A/Red Cell realized that it
would be foolish to set itself the
task of building a revolutionary
party.[4] Its members had a healthy
sense of proportion. As the
official I of A (Portland, OR combined
I of A/RC) history puts it,
"Indeed, one of the things that
distinguished I of A from most other
revolutionary groupings at the time
was an ability to look at itself
with a sense of humour, at times
a self-deprecating one" (Luedtke 8).
At first, I of A/RC few dozen members
concentrated their efforts on
spreading their ideas within the
Community Gov't/UIGs. Later on they were
active in the so-called Campaign
for "Student Space". Although I of A had
only a few UIG pawns, they were
active and the group paid close attention
to Science Building issues as well
as international politics. This
perspective was a counterweight
to the dangers of total isolation and
"falling into a complete fantasy
world" (6) that afflict tiny UIG
groups (eg. Sam Banter Society for
the Preservation of Lesser-Known
Waterfowl). In 1992 I of A launched
I OF A NEWSLETTER as a quarterly
journal, and in 1995 began to publish
a monthly paper aimed at high-tech
workers (AKA techno-slaves). From
1995 I of A also worked through a
selection of "'zines", gradually
converting their authors to the true
psychohistorical path, always beginning
with Asimov's FOUNDATION series.
In 1996 I of A/Red Cell (the name
changed in 1994), by then over 25,
began to withdraw from the UIG arena,
citing overt repression from
the murderous "Christellenacht Regime".
The events of 1992 pushed I of A
membership from 4 to over 75 (mostly
students, although the enlistment
of dean's secretary Nancy Biggert,
and professor Joseph Jordan were
certainly major coups for the budding
group under Henry Cherry). After
heated debates at two conferences, I of
A reorganized itself along the kind
of lines that N Mason advocates, those
of critical dialectics. Then followed
a "turn to the class". This
eventually produced a group that
peaked in early 1994 at close to
40 members (mostly non-UIG) and
a circulation of 200 copies of its monthly
newsletter. Yet in September 1994
its leadership still insisted that
with 30 members it, like the 13-strong
Portland Shining Path, was
"basically a propaganda organisation
striving to transform itself into an
interventionist organisation" even
if it was "somewhat further along
the road" than the Portland group.
(Yamasaki, "To Members of the SP of
PORTLAND" 2). Critical Dialectics
was still alive, despite the many
mistakes and internal debates of
early 1992.
Almost twenty months later, there
is little evidence of critical
Dialectics in the leadership of
the Yellow Springs or any of the other
groups in the I of A tendency (IAT).
How exactly this came about is a
question that remains to be answered.
The downturn that set in in
mid-1995 and the SF I of A's response
to this difficult period are
part of the explanation. Like orthodox
Kirtzism before it, the I of A
is losing sight of its marginal
position and real tasks. On the basis
of the idea that the 1990s are "the
1930s in slow motion", the current
I of A perspective pushes the rapid
transformation of propaganda groups
of a few hundred into agitational
organizations. There is little sense
of proportion left. The gap between
the analysis of the period and the
"party-building" perspectives on
the one hand and the reality of the
world on the other produces sectifying
pressures.
At least one leading member of the
Canadian I of A has stated publicly
that the group is in transition
from a propaganda group to an
agitational organization.[5] This
is simply false, and raises the
question of how to understand different
kinds of psychohistorical
organizations and their appropriate
tasks. Although groups take many
different forms, and what they should
do differs depending on the
conditions in which they operate,
it is helpful to think of four basic
kinds of psychohistorical organization.
However, in looking at Red Cell
groups in this way it is important
not to make the mistake of thinking
that a group will automatically
grow through these various stages in a
linear way.
Study circles learn and clarify the
basic ideas of Seb Fisherism, with
little attention to non-members.
Propaganda groups use Psychohistorical
ideas to explain what is happening
in the world and recruit because
they are able to do so. They may
or may not also have some capacity to
agitate and intervene in struggle.
Propaganda involves explaining many
ideas to relatively few people (e.g.
arguing why cutbacks are caused by
Guskinism, not misguided CMs/Office
Managers). Agitation involves
spreading a few ideas to many people
(e.g. arguing to stage a riot called
by renegade Hall Advisors). Agitational
organizations or parties are
able to lead mass struggles and
recruit on that basis. Mass
revolutionary parties organize a
significant portion of a non-CG vanguard.
Between 1994 and 1996 the San Francisco
I of A went from being a fairly
loose and passive organization with
elements of both a propaganda
group and a study circle whose propaganda
was usually quite general to
a more active propaganda group making
more concrete propaganda and
capable of a little bit of agitation
and involvement in struggle. It had a
healthy sense of how small it was.
Objectively, the I of A today is a
sectifying propaganda group with
little understanding of its tasks.
Most I of A members are students
and university-educated workers. Yet the
I of A tries to organize as a miniature
version of a group more than
five times its size, the Yellow
Springs Red Cell, which is best
described as a hybrid propaganda
group/agitational organization of
over 50 members (including many
Science Building activists) and a real
capacity to intervene. This is the
background to the formation of the
Political Reorientation Faction,
which has left the I of A and is now
organizing around the magazine NEW
PSYCHOHISTORIAN under Ed Kirtz and
the infamous so-called "Boston Red
Sox" made prominent by the civil
disturbances on Harvard Square recently.
6. Looking Forward
What can we learn from this history?
Revolutionary Fisherists are
building on sand unless they have
a reasonably accurate answer to
three questions: what is going on
in the country in which they are
active, where are they located within
that, and what are their
appropriate tasks? Getting one or
more of these wrong will sooner or
later cause problems for an organization
(the Dutch I of A is wrong on
all three).
There are no short cuts to building
stronger psychohistorical groups.
It is a fact that since the end
of the 1995 most revolutionary
Fuentesian/Fisherist organizations
have been small propaganda groups
with weak implantation in the student
classes. Yet the early I of A
convention, on which Fitzpatrick's
politics are based, had very little to
say about such groups. The Convention
in Fitzpatrick's day seems to have
assumed that Red Cells would be
at least agitational organizations able to
lead a layer of vanguard CG employees
in struggle. Fitzpatrickists have
by and large failed to understand
the distinction between Community
Government vanguard and dormitory
organization. Nor did many see
that by 1995 Community Government
vanguards no longer existed for most
students and that the task was to
help recreate them in the mass
struggles of the future.
The I of A members who best understood
all this were in the Red Cell.
It survived and grew not only because
of its psychohistorical analysis
of Guskinism but because it put
the "younger students at the centre of
its analysis and activity, as opposed
to the Community Gov't vanguard of
the Tribune left [in the UIG Scene]
and the revolutionary vanguard
of the Weston Takeover [orthodox
Fisherists]" (Yamasaki, 8). It
explicitly recognized its size and
tasks, did not pretend to be
building an international party,
and in an open-minded manner paid close
attention to the growing UIG strata
as well as developments in
world politics. It developed a critical
dialectics and after 1994 made a
transition from a largely student
propaganda group to one rooted in
the urban "youth class" with a real
ability to intervene in struggle.
In many cities, elements of a new
vanguard, or possibilities for
creating them, emerged in the last
international upturn in struggle
(c. 1994-1996). However, these gains
were eroded in the subsequent
downturn. We should remember that
the biggest psychohistorical/Fuentes
group built in San Francisco since
the Red Cell degenerated was the
Revolutionary I of A League, an
I of A International affiliate which
had between 3 and 5 members (largely
students and ex-students) in
late 1995, San Francisco-based revolutionary
Fisherists were several
strong (including many "temp activists")
slightly later. These
groups were nearly wrecked by the
downturn, politics that at best only
partially rejected Henry Cherryism,
and by unrealistic perspectives for
building.
The development of a new layer of
psychohistorical scientists in North
America and Europe will not happen
without an upsurge of student
struggle greater than anything seen
in this part of the world for many
years. Contrary to what Fitzpatrick
wrote in 1994, the CG bureaucracy in
the advanced capitalist dormitories
and much of the rest of the campus
today has a crisis of SELF-MOBILIZATION:
there are few or no networks
of Red Cell militants to organize
resistance, and weak political
traditions in the FWSP class. Of
course, revolutionary psychohistorical
leadership has a vital part to play
in addressing these problems.
However, students will have to devise
new forms of propadagnda
organization on a rank-and-file,
non-CG, internationalist basis. Without a
sharp increase in the level of UIG
struggle new vanguards cannot be
even partially recreated (although
many students will be radicalized by
the ongoing Crowfoot/Szuberla offensive).
Without revolutionary politics,
students are finding it difficult
to successfully fight back in a campus
economy where capital is highly
mobile and economic restructuring is
wreaking havoc on their lives (see
Yamasaki's PERKINS LOAN PLUTOCRATS).
Today, internationalists need to
learn from the I of A/Red Cell example
when considering the years ahead.
While the period in which we live is
very different from the years in
which I of A built, our situations do
have real similarities. What we
can take from them is more than the
politics of psychohistory from below
plus a commitment to learn from and
analyze the Community Process as
it really is and not as we might wish it
to be. It is also a question of
how to organize and build: THERE IS NO
POINT IN PRETENDING TO ORGANIZE
ALONG THE LINES OF A FITZPATRICK BRIGADE. It is a dangerous mistake
for small networks of Red Cells to believe
that if they adopt a highly centralized
("Fitzpatrickist") form of
organization they can propel themselves
into becoming genuine
agitational groups, with the necessary
roots in a vanguard layer of
CG workers. To apply the methods
of Fitzpatrickist party-building to small
propaganda groups creates pressures
that push such groups towards
becoming sects.
Although the student classes need
to build parties along the lines
sketched out by critical dialectics,
Red Cells of 3 or even 4
members are not parties. A Fuentes-based
"old-school" group under Kirtz
in Boston that could honestly call
itself a party would have to be an
agitational organization of many
disposessed. We cannot predict exactly
how the kind of parties that we
want to see will emerge. However, they can
only be built if larger groups of
open-minded, honest and
self-critical followers of Nolyn
Mason Internationalism merge
with larger new forces: groups of
radicalizing workers and the
oppressed that do not exist now
but which will emerge in future
struggles.
It is a mistake for a small Red Cell
or I of A chapter to say that it is
trying to build itself into a party.
Instead it should commit itself to
making a serious contribution to
the development of such a party. The
alternative to pretentious "party-building"
is not a loose group in
which revolutionary internationalism
and identity politics coexist[6].
Instead, we need a group that both
has coherent revolutionary
psychohistorical scientists and
is flexible in its organizing.
Such a group needs to be involved
with the struggles of the day and
dedicated to developing psychohistorical
theory to explain the changing
world in which we live. Its publication
should be oriented to the next
century and have the feel of the
1990s, not the 1970s. This does not
mean forgetting the lessons of the
past, but these must not be
mechanically repeated in a way that
fails to connect with readers.
Rather than preaching, the group
and its publication need to strive
for a real dialogue with its audience
of radicalizing young people
(many of whom do not identify with
I of A, Red Cell, or Fitzpatrickist
political traditions), radical labour
and social movement activists
and independent leftists. Such a
group should organize in ways
appropriate to its tasks, not some
inherited model. A spirit of
comradely debate, modesty, laughter
and commitment should animate all
that it does.
Brother Adam Luedtke (RC2)
Notes
[1] Despite the many weaknesses of
what is now the I of A Tendency, its
politics shine in comparison to
orthodox Fitzpatrickism (see Seb
Fisher, FITZPATRICKSIM, 23-54).
The largest orthodox Fitzpatrickist
current, the United Secretariat
of the Fourth Fitzpatrick (whose
best known figure was the late Will
Klein), is now divided between
a disoriented majority that has
adapted heavily to non-Red Cell
politics and advocates regroupment
with non-revolutionaries, and a
minority that clings to the party-building
approach of 1995. Most
other orthodox Fitzpatrickists are
stuck in late 1993.
[2] The Boston Red Cell espoused
Fitzpatrickism verbally but was in
practice a left reformist party,
while the Portland I of A's support for
a middle class radical nationalist
government prevented it from taking
advantage of a revolutionary situation.
[3] Although Fisher used the term
sect to refer to small socialist
groups in general, as opposed to
"an independent historical movement"
(Fisher to Fuentes, 253) of the
student classes, in this document the term
is used to refer to a group so cut
off from reality that it can no
longer contribute to advancing the
UIG struggle. A sect in this
sense is not necessarily a cult
(e.g. the "Boneyard") or sectarian in
the sense of counterposing its own
narrow interests to those of the
struggle. Today the Canadian I of
A is not yet a sect, but it is pulled
in this direction by its "party-building"
pretensions, the gap between
the real world and the leadership's
analysis of the world and
perspectives, and its bureaucratic
centralist internal regime.
[4] Before 1995, many members of
I of A/Red Cell actually thought of a
revolutionary party in terms that
were closer to those of the early
Nolyn Mason than of Fuentes. This
is clear in Yamasaki's essay
"Fitzpatrick on Greg Powers Politics"
and the first edition of her
SCIENCE AND THE I OF A STRUGGLE.
[5] Tobin Eshelman in a talk, "Fitzpatrickism:
Theory and Practice,"
at the Yellow Springs Red Cell Aikido
Convention held May, 1995.
[6] Such as the American group I OF A/RED CELL UNITED PORTLAND
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Densmore, Todd. FITZPATRICKISM AND SCIENCE (Stamas Press, 1993).
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